Making everyone happy is impossible. Pissing them off is a piece of cake. I like cake.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

LabourList: where "exciting" = "fucking dull"

As many people have noticed, Derek Draper's thrilling answer to the right-wing blogs has been launched—LabourList.org. It looks, and operates, like shit; the articles are the usual fucking po-faced, poorly-researched wank that attacks the Tories rather than concentrating on what NuLabour have done right (a difficult task, admittedly) or what better ideas they may have; further, the roster of writers looks to be one of the most tedious line-ups since Take That reformed.

Obviously, your humble Devil will be adding it to his RSS reader—well, he will be when they've actually got their RSS feed working properly—in order to be able to mock them with monotonous regularity. Possibly.

Anyway, lots of people on the Right and the Left have been wishing the very best of luck to LabourList.org, which is nice. Personally, I hope that they fail miserably and, with the standard of writing so far displayed, I am fairly confident that this collection of wittering nitwits will be dead in the water in about six months—although I could be wrong.

It could be sooner.

Anyway, it's late and my burning boudoir beckons, but I thought that I would leave you with the biography of one of their A-List writers, Sarah Mulholland.

I ran this paragraph through my super DK Left-Speak Translator, and it came up with the following:

Sarah Mulholland is a terrific bore who has never held down a proper job in her entire life, and who can be safely dismissed as a total fucking moron who couldn't write elegantly or pertinently if her life depended on it.

I thought that this must be a mistake—after all, her wonderfully insightful article on university top-up fees, despite not answering her own question and adding precisely fuck-all of any use to the debate—is surely one of the must-read Lefty tracts of the century—so I ran it through the DK Left-Speak Translator again and again and it just kept spitting out the same response:

Sarah Mulholland is a terrific bore who has never held down a proper job in her entire life, and who can be safely dismissed as a total fucking moron who couldn't write elegantly or pertinently if her life depended on it.

Damn! I thought that I'd got it right: I'll just have to check the algorithms in the morning...

If the contributors to Labour List are incapable of doing it themselves then the editor(s) should make sure articles are full of links to background information, links to other bloggers’ articles…

Linking to research or, at the very least, reputable media sources to back up any figures or assertions is incredibly important: this government have been adept at deception, lies and spin and the writers are going to have to work hard to overcome this and gain some kind of reputation for honesty (I'm not holding my breath).

So far the results are... Oh, for fuck's sake, the articles are just tedious, partisan bollocks; further, the contributors have obviously been told that the house writing style is one that...

"should make the reader feel like they are wading through a lake of the world's most turgid treacle: you must bore them into submission."

Now, what about this LabourList shite? I was half hoping that it would be a place where I could indulge in a spot of destructive fisking. Then I thought "Why bother?" I looked at the site and realized that no fun was to be had there at all. Most of the commentators so far have come straight from Guido & similar watering-holes. When they get modded out what will we have? CiF is more interesting and amusing, if socialist-baiting is your sport.

All in all, talking to these people is a waste of breath. If they can't see that the Leader has trashed (a) Britain, (b) its economy, and (c) the Labour Party, then they certainly aren't likely to be swayed by any sort of argument.

I did a fine art degree in the 90s, and because of the degree, you had to pay for all sorts of crazy stuff. each tube of paint cost a fiver, each brush was a couple of quid, there was studio space to pay for, canvas, frames, exhibitions, endless amounts of paper, pencils, you name it, we had to buy it.

Even so, despite having no money at all, I managed to leave uni with about 2 grand in student loans.

So please someone, explain this to me. Is this guy going to end up with that much debt because he's been conned into *believing* he's supposed to leave with that much?

I am fairly confident that this collection of wittering nitwits will be dead in the water in about six months

They agree with you, the site's domain has less than a year until it needs to be renewed and thy only bought 12 months to start with. The cost of an extra year is barely anything so it doesn't really say much about the expected longevity.

"Clearly the ‘top’ universities will charge the highest fees and become richer, while smaller institutions, unable to compete at that level and recognising their relevant market value, will be forced to attract students through lower fees, meaning they become poorer and less able to invest in their staff, students and facilities".